This is a Democratic civil war: The Hillary/Bernie rift cuts to the essence of the party’s soul

Are the Democrats a modern corporate party, or one for the people? The "limousine liberal" debate still matters

STEVE FRASER

Trying in vain to derail the Donald Trump locomotive, his Republican Party opponents tarred him with the most toxic political metaphor of the last half century: he was, they claimed, a limousine liberal.

Hillary Clinton has borne that stigma through a good part of her political career. She will undoubtedly confront that charge again in the fall should she be the Democratic nominee. Even socialist Bernie Sanders has been depicted as the voice of well-heeled “limousine liberals and Mercedes Marxists.” How to sort this out?

Nowadays we assume that a limousine liberal is almost by definition a Democrat, so why did Trump hear the criticism? Actually, however, the first politician to suffer that sobriquet was a Republican. Back in 1969 the then-comptroller of New York City, a long-since forgotten Democratic Party apparatchik named Mario Procaccino, was running against the city’s sitting Republican mayor, John Lindsay. Procaccino called out Lindsay as a “limousine liberal.” He meant that Lindsay was to the manor born, raised on Park Avenue, tutored at the toniest preparatory schools, a graduate of Yale, formerly employed by a white-shoe law firm, and a past congressman from the nation’s richest congressional district, known as the “silk stocking district” on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Despite these credentials — which normally would have constituted the résumé of a staunch defender of the status quo — Lindsay belonged instead to a breed of subversive elitists, determined to undermine the traditional order of things. They championed the civil rights revolution, advocated a war on poverty, undermined the war on communism abroad, disrespected the mores and moral strictures governing the family, sexual relations and cultural propriety in general, and could care less about the dilemmas facing white working and lower middle-class Americans, Procaccino’s people from the outer boroughs. While these purported reformers pretended to succor the poorest, they really meant for working people to bear the costs, while they remained insulated from any real contact with poverty, crime and the everyday struggle to get by, living in their exclusive neighborhoods, sending their children to private prep schools, sheltering their capital gains and dividends from the taxman, and getting around town in limousines, not subway cars.

In 2012, Barney Frank, then in his last year in Congress, helped write the Democratic national platform. At least he thinks he did.

“I don’t remember what was in it,” says Frank, who was a member of the platform committee at that year’s Democratic National Convention, “and it wasn’t a very interesting tour of duty.” Describing the platform as the “Miss Congeniality of the convention process,” the former Massachusetts representative says everything besides the nomination of the president and the vice president is just this “Model U.N. kind of stuff.”

“Maybe you are a particularly savvy person,” he adds, “but I can’t remember much that’s been in any platform.”

Four years later, the Democratic primary is slogging toward a conclusion in which the platform will play a significantly larger role—Miss Swimsuit, let’s say. At the moment, Hillary Clinton, a couple of weeks from officially clinching the party nomination, is struggling to unite Democrats around her candidacy. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, shows no indication that he is excited to throw his support her way once he’s been defeated. He is going to want meaningful concessions about the way the Democratic Party does business, what it believes in, and for whom it acts.

In 2012, Barney Frank, then in his last year in Congress, helped write the Democratic national platform. At least he thinks he did.

“I don’t remember what was in it,” says Frank, who was a member of the platform committee at that year’s Democratic National Convention, “and it wasn’t a very interesting tour of duty.” Describing the platform as the “Miss Congeniality of the convention process,” the former Massachusetts representative says everything besides the nomination of the president and the vice president is just this “Model U.N. kind of stuff.”

“Maybe you are a particularly savvy person,” he adds, “but I can’t remember much that’s been in any platform.”

Four years later, the Democratic primary is slogging toward a conclusion in which the platform will play a significantly larger role—Miss Swimsuit, let’s say. At the moment, Hillary Clinton, a couple of weeks from officially clinching the party nomination, is struggling to unite Democrats around her candidacy. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, shows no indication that he is excited to throw his support her way once he’s been defeated. He is going to want meaningful concessions about the way the Democratic Party does business, what it believes in, and for whom it acts.

ORLANDO — Potential Democratic delegates for both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were vocally upset on Saturday after they arrived at a party meeting here to discover they were not included on the final ballot.

Rules agreed to by the Clinton and Sanders campaigns, and approved by Florida Democratic Party leaders, allowed each campaign to take the original list of hundreds of potential at-large delegates and cut them down to roughly 90.

Many of those who were cut had not been informed, and several complained about the process and the expenses they had incurred to travel to Orlando for the meeting.

“There is something wrong with this party if they knock me off,” shouted Paullette Sims Wimberly, a Clinton delegate candidate from Hillsborough County, just outside the ballroom where the meeting was held.

I watched Hillary Clinton’s forces swipe Nevada: This is what the media’s not telling you

Bernie's forces were justifiably outraged over arbitrary rule changes and a chairwoman determined to ignore them

GAYLE BRANDEIS

It probably wasn’t the best time for me to go to Vegas. My beloved father had just died the week before, and I was feeling hazy and vulnerable, prone to weeping at the slightest provocation. Grief made me feel like I had no skin and no brain; grief had turned me into a cloud, and I was in that floaty state when I got on the plane with my husband—a state delegate headed to the Nevada Democratic Convention—and our 6-year-old son. I wasn’t sure what would happen once we got to Vegas, whether all the lights and bells would hammer me back into my body, or whether I would drift even further away from myself, hover like the cigarette smoke over the casino floor.

I had wanted to be a delegate, myself, but knew I was going to be out of town during the county convention in April, so I didn’t put my hat in the ring at the February caucus, where I had served as a precinct captain for Bernie. It was my first election season in Nevada, my first caucus, and the whole process seemed wild to me, taking what was normally such a private experience—voting quietly in an individual booth—and turning it into a political game of Red Rover, people taking sides in a room, trying to sway folks to come over to their side, their candidate; it was a civil game in our precinct, but I could see how easily things could turn nasty. I was grateful my husband had volunteered himself to be a county delegate, and was excited when he got the email that he was chosen to be a state delegate, as well. Nevada has a strange three-tier system—Hillary had won a majority at the February caucus, but more Bernie delegates showed up at the county caucus, negating Hillary’s win, so the race for delegates at the state convention promised to be a tight one. I looked forward to seeing the process in action; I never expected that process would become so chaotic and surreal, although I had become used to surreal of late.

We arrived late Friday night and all around me, women were dressed to the nines and looking miserable. My heart broke for them. I wanted to know their stories; why were they so unhappy? The weight of crumbling expectations seemed to fill the smoky air. I found myself sending little silent affirmations to all these sad, fancy women—You are beautiful, I beamed to them. It will be okay. Perhaps I was channeling my dad, who always did whatever he could to make people feel better about themselves.

The convention started out well the next morning. Everyone seemed excited to be there—people were decked out in their Bernie and Hillary gear, smiling, passing out buttons, bustling about. I signed a petition to bring solar energy incentives back to Nevada, feeling happy that my son could witness this whole process, witness democracy in action. He and I found a place to sit on the floor on the side of the room as my husband took his seat in the Washoe County Bernie section near the front of the hall. The chairwoman, Roberta Lange, gave a rousing welcome, reminding all of us that we were there to defeat Trump and his misogyny, his xenophobia, his hate, his lies. The room felt unified, energized, cheering as a group; I felt inspired, felt yes, we can do this together.

I watched Hillary Clinton’s forces swipe Nevada: This is what the media’s not telling you

Bernie's forces were justifiably outraged over arbitrary rule changes and a chairwoman determined to ignore them

GAYLE BRANDEIS

It probably wasn’t the best time for me to go to Vegas. My beloved father had just died the week before, and I was feeling hazy and vulnerable, prone to weeping at the slightest provocation. Grief made me feel like I had no skin and no brain; grief had turned me into a cloud, and I was in that floaty state when I got on the plane with my husband—a state delegate headed to the Nevada Democratic Convention—and our 6-year-old son. I wasn’t sure what would happen once we got to Vegas, whether all the lights and bells would hammer me back into my body, or whether I would drift even further away from myself, hover like the cigarette smoke over the casino floor.

I had wanted to be a delegate, myself, but knew I was going to be out of town during the county convention in April, so I didn’t put my hat in the ring at the February caucus, where I had served as a precinct captain for Bernie. It was my first election season in Nevada, my first caucus, and the whole process seemed wild to me, taking what was normally such a private experience—voting quietly in an individual booth—and turning it into a political game of Red Rover, people taking sides in a room, trying to sway folks to come over to their side, their candidate; it was a civil game in our precinct, but I could see how easily things could turn nasty. I was grateful my husband had volunteered himself to be a county delegate, and was excited when he got the email that he was chosen to be a state delegate, as well. Nevada has a strange three-tier system—Hillary had won a majority at the February caucus, but more Bernie delegates showed up at the county caucus, negating Hillary’s win, so the race for delegates at the state convention promised to be a tight one. I looked forward to seeing the process in action; I never expected that process would become so chaotic and surreal, although I had become used to surreal of late.

We arrived late Friday night and all around me, women were dressed to the nines and looking miserable. My heart broke for them. I wanted to know their stories; why were they so unhappy? The weight of crumbling expectations seemed to fill the smoky air. I found myself sending little silent affirmations to all these sad, fancy women—You are beautiful, I beamed to them. It will be okay. Perhaps I was channeling my dad, who always did whatever he could to make people feel better about themselves.

The convention started out well the next morning. Everyone seemed excited to be there—people were decked out in their Bernie and Hillary gear, smiling, passing out buttons, bustling about. I signed a petition to bring solar energy incentives back to Nevada, feeling happy that my son could witness this whole process, witness democracy in action. He and I found a place to sit on the floor on the side of the room as my husband took his seat in the Washoe County Bernie section near the front of the hall. The chairwoman, Roberta Lange, gave a rousing welcome, reminding all of us that we were there to defeat Trump and his misogyny, his xenophobia, his hate, his lies. The room felt unified, energized, cheering as a group; I felt inspired, felt yes, we can do this together.